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Maxwell not so Smart

During the first quarter of tonight's radio broadcast of the Celtics game against the Houston Rockets,one of the Celtics players managed to fake out the referee to get a call to go his way. The referee who made this call was Violet Palmer, who happens to be a woman. Cedric Maxwell, the analyst / sidekick on the Celtics broadcast team, proclaimed "Get back in the kitchen!" when she made the call. Max's partner, Sean Grande, tried to throw him a lifeline by pointing out that they had both been previously impressed by Palmer's officiating, but Max continued "Get back in the kitchen and fix me some bacon and eggs!"

Note that I do not have a recording and that these quotes are from memory, but I am positive that they are nearly verbatim.

Maybe I live on a different planet than most of the listenership of the Celtics these days, but I found these comments to be inexcusably sexist. I don't know who to contact at which station -- the Celtics are normally on WRKO 680, but were on sister station WEEI 850 tonight while WRKO replayed a World Series 2004 game. I want to see Maxwell pay for this stupidity.

WTF....WTF?, the guy was making a joke!!! A F'ing joke!! What is wrong with people like you, you humorless bastard !! Maybe in your world that you live everyone has a Nazi mind filter on, but most of us understand jokes.

There is a big difference between kitchen and nigger. Grant it, he do owe her an apology,but it is people like you I fear the most. It seem as though every time an issue comes up, people like you seem to always pull that magic word "nigger" out of the hat. At the rate immigration is going, you will be glad to have "nigger" on your side. Way to go racists.

I agree, no one should ever say that work "nigger". But that includes African Americans. If you don't like being called that awful word, then don't call eachother that word either. Until it stops, don't get upset because you condone it.

Ron Newman you fail in your attempt to be a pedant and succeed without effort in being parochial. First words of sentences begin with a capital letter and "correctly spelled" is not a hyphenated word. Your written composition and sentence structure also need attention. Perhaps you should employ an editor.

THERE WERE ALOT OF JOKES YOU COULD HAVE TOLD, BUT THE WORD "NIGGER" IS NOT A JOKING MATTER. TECHNICALLY, WHAT YOU SAID IS W0RSE THAN WHAT HE COULD HAVE EVER SAID. I UNDERSTAND YOU'RE UPSET ABOUT HIS SEXIST COMMENT BUT MY GOODNESS. THAT WAS VERY, VERY IGNORANT!!!!! TO SAY THE LEAST.

For a male to make such a sexist remark directed toward a female is totally unexcusable. Women were slaves in this country before Africans were brought here, and they fought hard to overcome their bondage to men. Women are still slaves in this country whether people like you think so or not. Many women still make less money and receive less deserved promotions than men. Many women are still raped and beaten without the law to protect them. Women are still treated as and looked on as sex slaves. Any man that makes a stupid comment like, "Get back in the kitchen and make me some eggs and bacon" should be fired. Pigs like him should NEVER be in any public forum where they can express their loathing and disrespect for women. For a black man to make such a comment tells me that he thinks of women as slaves. Obviously he hasn't learned anything about the tragedy of slavery days in regards to sexism. Maybe 30 days of cooking my breakfast would teach him some manners. In fact, I think the best punishment for him would be to do public service by cooking and serving a group of 30 successful business women breakfast everyday for a month.

Racism is not OK, but sexism is? You think it is not OK to call someone a racist name, but yet it is perfectly fine to insult women by making a sexist remark insinuating that women should be treated like slaves. Hello? What planet are you from?

Dave,
You also have the exchange out of order. Max made the initial comment, a bad impresion of Tommy, then paused, then continued with the bacon comment. Grande affirmed that the ref had been the best on previous crews after that entire bit by Max, and Max agreed.

Cedric Maxwell was kidding. That being said, he made a joke about where the ref belonged based on gender. The fact that he wasn't affirming that as something he actually believed is worth something, but he shouldn't have said it. If we can all see that the back of the bus comment above is clearly over the line, that you can't even jokingly say someone belongs at a certain station based on race, then we should understand that the same holds true for gender.

The guy making this complaint is obviously a stay at home father whos wife tells him to throw on the apron and bake her a freakin pie.. CRY About it you sissy.. go watch the WNBA where WOMEN BELONG ITS THE NBA! MENS LEAGUE WAAAAH WAHHHH she shud be making eggs for maxwell.. cuz female refs suck.

Lighten up. Maxwell was probably joking, although probably not in good taste with everyone's current sensitivities to consider. If he wasn't joking then it was politically incorrect and inappropriate, although it probably didn't hurt anyone except maybe Max in the eyes of some fans. Everyone it seems is out for vengeance these days for every misstep. E-mail or write Maxwell or WRKO/WEEI to let them know you didn't like it, but let's not get carried away.

Yes, said in the correct context, telling Maxwell to get back out into the fields could be funny. Telling me to go back to the bog and dig up some more potatoes could be funny. Or perhaps some sort of joke about how Irishmen drink a lot. Whatever.

There is only way to judge what is funny. If you think it's funny, it is.

By the same token - no pun intended - there is also only one way to judge whether or not something is hurtful. If you are hurt by it, it is. Has anyone bothered to ask the ref for a comment or is everybody satisfied that they know how she feels? It seems to me that that might be just as presumptuous and condescending as anything else mentioned here.

I'm not sure that one's self is the best judge of one's own humor...just because I think I'm funny doesn't mean I am, and the same statement from me to a friend could be funny whereas to a stranger it could be wildly inappropriate and offensive.

You make a good point about whether they've gotten the target's reaction though...she might also think it's funny. Might not. Dunno.

I just want to make clear that I didn't mean to say that the person telling the joke is the best judge. I meant that if you hear a joke, and you think that it's funny, then it most certainly is - everybody else's opinion to the contrary be damned.

I agree it's funny if it's funny. It wasn't that clever, but hey, I'm kinda picky about humor.
As a "person with a disability" (sickeningly pc) I get a lot of gimp jokes tossed at me. Some are funny and some are mean spirited put downs. I laugh at the former and flip the bird to the a-holes who utter the latter. I had neither reaction to the sexist comment. It was just foolish.

While Maxwell's comment may have just been a "joke", it's the exact same thing as throwing around racial jokes. Why is it that sexist comments like this can be made and they're "only jokes" and people need to lighten up, but "nigger jokes" get thrown around and the person is a racist and there's a huge uproar about it? People need to stop being hypocrites and stay on one side: either they are all just jokes, or they are all unacceptable.

There are subtle nuances to humor. It is not all just black and white. What some folks find funny, other folks may find tragic, and vice-versa. You cannot judge a joke (or a comment or whatever we're calling this now) as "unacceptable" simply because it contains some word that triggers bad feelings in YOU.

I never said that anything triggered bad feelings in me. I didn't find it offensive all at, because it was just a stupid comment on his part. I just find it rather hypocritical that jokes about women are funny and racial jokes are bad. They're all jokes against a group of people, but one is generally okay while the other is "wrong".

It wasn't funny. It's not a joke to many women regardless of what the ref thinks. Unfortunately it is all too true that many men really feel that way about women. If you think that women are not being treated as slaves in their homes, on the streets, and at work, take off those rose colored glasses. Many times something that is said in jest is someone's true feelings. He needs to keep his sexist comments to himself. I'm not laughing. I think it is deplorable conduct on his part. He probably thinks women should be in the kitchen cooking because he pathetically can't cook for himself.

We live in Massachusetts, where no matter what is said, there are always going to be "those people" (like the one's upset with Cedric right now). "Those People" are the one's that get irrate over absolutely anything. They feel like it is there job to be the social police. If it even comes close to touching a subject that might be deemed politically incorrect, then "those people" will b*tch and b*tch about how it is such an injustice and we dont need to take it. GROW UP!!! GET A LIFE!!! If you people watched the Celtics for five minutes, rather than getting irate over something that is hearsay, you would understand that Cedric was mimicing Tommy Heinson, and making a joke. If you don't like his humor, CHANGE THE STATION! I am so sick and tired of these people that can't wait to jump all over the next controversial statement that is made in this state. Dig a whole, climb in, and don't come out.

People need to understand the difference between someone being hurtful and someone trying to be funny. I was listening to the game and understand that Max was trying to be funny and he was doing a "Tommy" impression. The female ref was praised by both Sean and Max right after the comment. LIGHTEN UP your life will be happier. WEEI 850 AM radio is the best thing in Boston.

Maxwell, you son of a bitch! How dare you insult a woman referee. So what if she's a woman? She's a very competent referee, in my opinion. I hope she puts you in your place next time she officiates here in Boston! Have a nice day, Maxwell, you dumb chauvinist!

if you were offended by that comment then you should probably throw your tv away because there are things said a lot worse than that on tv every night. You also neglect to mention that he was impersonating someone and that it was an attempt at humor. Yes it probably wasn't the best thing to say but people like you are blowing this way out of proportion and leaving out the fact that it was an attempt at a joke. Man some people just have nothing better to do in life than bitch about everything.

He is supposed to be a "color" commentator adding fun and interest.. I am a business WOMAN... and I thought it was funny. The man was making a joke! If a male ref made the error and he said, "you better practice washing the towels man, you won't be here long with a call like that" no one would have said a word. LET'S GET OFF OUR OVERLY SENSITIVE ASSES AND GROW UP. We have become so ABSURDLY politically correct that we can't have a bit of humor anymore. Dear Lord, let's get a HANDLE...the man did not say during a SERIOUS interview, "women should all go back to the kitchen where they belong and shut up". He was making a colorful fun comment to be sarcastic. Just like when Rosie was joking about "even in China you hear like CHING CHANG CHONG CHING Danny DeVito Ching chong"... come on was that equal to saying something horrid like "All Chinks are assholes"? She was making a point, not a racial slur. Can we no longer express ourselves for fear of being shot for it? HUMOR is based on making fun of things. Death, fear, sex, ethnicity, religion, and so on. GET A LIFE PEOPLE.